Kickstarter CEO to founders: "Don't box yourself in"

Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor took the helm in 2022 amid declining revenue. Now, Kickstarter is coming off its best year on record and is poised to build on that momentum.

Why it matters: Taylor, a successful entrepreneur before his tenure at Kickstarter, told the entrepreneurial crowd Thursday at Sloss Tech to stop accepting limitations imposed by others.

What they're saying: Although he now leads one of the best-known crowdfunding sites, Taylor grew up "broke" in Richmond, Virginia, he said.

Citing the Lil Wayne mixtape "No Ceilings," Taylor said, "I've had that same mentality and mindset through my entire life," and that it "means essentially anything is possible."

When the mixtape came out in 2009, Taylor was working minimum wage at JoAnn Fabrics and living with his mother in Richmond, he told the crowd, but his belief in himself was "my biggest superpower."

He eventually turned to selling drugs, which he said was "the easiest way that I saw to make money."

Zoom in: "My mom found out what I was doing and she slapped the hell out of me and then changed the trajectory of my whole career," he said.

She landed him a job interview that served as his entry into the world of marketing, and when he was homeless years later, he found "the Steve Jobs and the Jack Dorseys and the Mark Zuckerbergs" while seeking shelter in a Richmond library.

"It was like, wow ... this tech world, this entrepreneurship, it felt like it was the great equalizer to me."

Catch up quick: Taylor went on to found several companies, starting with an events company around which he built marketing and ticketing technology, selling it a couple years later.

But when he saw that the company was sold again for 15 times what he had sold it for, he moved to Silicon Valley and worked in marketing for a startup.

By 25, he had started four multimillion-dollar companies without any venture capital money, he said, and at 29 he became the CMO of Artsy, where he grew the platform by 150% and transformed the demographic to include more artists of color.

Inside the room: "Entrepreneurship is rapidly changing due to the macroeconomic environment," Taylor told Axios after his remarks Thursday.

It's a combination of what he called "forced entrepreneurship," from tech talent losing their jobs to the creator economy of young people turning away from traditional careers.

Kickstarter is becoming a go-to for companies that have garnered their own audience and want to retain ownership amid the pressures that come with traditional venture-capital fundraising.

The bottom line: "The world is changing at a crazy rapid pace. Don't box yourself in," he told the crowd. "Society will already do that for you, so don't do it to yourself."